Advance file photoLawmakers like Staten Island City Councilman James Oddo (far right) say City Hall's threat to shutter fire companies was real and would have gone through had it not been for the Council.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In the end, fire companies didn't close and legions of public school teachers weren't laid off.

The hours at senior centers and libraries weren't cut, and day-care slots were protected.

Staten Island's "big four" cultural institutions even got a $250,000 "bonus" from the City Council to divvy amongst themselves.

And while there were some cuts and layoffs, the new city budget wasn't the mass bloodletting that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Island lawmakers had feared and warned about.

So how did this "miracle" occur in the midst of the worst economy since the Great Depression?

Pretty much in the same way it occurred in years past.

Despite the staggering economy, the same budget "dance" that has gone on in the city for decades played itself out yet again: City Hall issued a preliminary budget that threatened deep cuts, but after negotiations with the City Council, money was restored and life pretty much went on as before.

The "found money" comes about in part because Bloomberg, as other mayors have done in years past, intentionally underestimated revenue. When more money came in from taxes and other sources, there was more to spend. It was just a matter of how to spend it.

Things were a bit more politically charged this year, with Bloomberg looking to change the seniority-based system that governs teacher layoffs.

And lawmakers said City Hall's threat to shutter fire companies was real and would have gone through had it not been for the Council.

City Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/ Brooklyn), part of the Council budget negotiating team, said the Council also sought to gain leverage with City Hall by not automatically restoring funding to culturals, parks and libraries.

That was a change from past budget tangos.

But even with that gambit, the money was eventually restored, as was the money for senior centers and the rest. The funds came from a pool of $350 million available to the Council to fund budget restorations and member items.

MEMBER-ITEM $$

Around $50 million of that is member-item money, which the lawmakers give to community groups, programs and projects in their districts at their own discretion.

Also getting credit for bringing home that bacon was Brooklyn Democratic Councilman Domenic Recchia, chair of the Council Finance Committee.

While a welcome boost to the Island, that payout in particular raises an interesting philosophical point when it comes to Oddo and Ignizio, both fiscally conservative Republicans.

While the two have been lauded for securing money that helped save fire companies, culturals, parks and libraries here, both have been firm opponents of Bloomberg administration attempts to boost revenue.

Oddo, who is running for borough president in 2013, was vehemently opposed to Bloomberg's 18.5 percent property tax hike in 2002, a vote that took place before Ignizio was in the Council.

Both lawmakers voted against congestion pricing, a concept that Bloomberg said would have brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the city's coffers.

But Oddo said he's not having his cake and eating it too by piping up for increased and even "special" funding for the Island while branding himself as a fiscal conservative for his red-borough constituents back home.

He said that ever-escalating spending on pensions, Medicaid, debt service and health care costs for employees are the cause of city budget deficits.

"The drive for member items, and for fairness for Staten Island, isn't what's creating budget gaps," he said. "It's a fraction of the problem."

PENSION REFORM

Oddo said the Bloomberg administration has failed to address the pension problem in its 10 years in office, even though Bloomberg has made a mantra this year out of talking about escalating pension costs and their effect on the budget.

Oddo called it "too little, too late."

But City Hall spokesman Marc LaVorgna said Bloomberg began calling for pension reform as far back as his 2003 budget. He said Bloomberg had kept up the call through budgets and State of City addresses in most years since.

"The mayor has been focused on this issue from the beginning of his term," LaVorgna said. "The idea that the mayor hasn't been talking about this is false. And the warnings he gave have unfortunately come true."

Oddo said the city wouldn't need to raise taxes if the pensions and the rest had been reformed.

Oddo said it's ludicrous to equate tax increases to "getting an extra $250,000 for Staten Island."

"It's pennies on the dollar of the problem," he said. "It's a superficial understanding of that the real problem is and lets the administration off the hook for what's happened."

Said Oddo, "If people think I'm inconsistent, let me sit down with them for a minute and explain the difference between a penny and a dollar."

Congestion pricing, he said, wouldn't have brought much money to the Island and was a "bad deal" for the borough.

Ignizio said that his job is to keep the budget as small as possible and to prevent the city from taking too much from taxpayers.

But once the amount of the budget is set, he said he tries to get as big a piece of the pie for the Island as possible, regardless of his fiscal philosophy.

"It's a percentage game," Ignizio said. "It's not that the pie should continue to grow."

Said Ignizio, "We've never had the magnitude of infrastructure investment that the other boroughs have. It's not a level playing field. We deserve more because we've received less in capital and discretionary allocations."